Today is my 33rd birthday. 

It’s currently raining here in Toronto, but the sun is supposed to come out this afternoon. The Raptors won game 7 of the first round of the playoffs last night and now go on to face the Miami Heat in the conference semi-finals. The last time they made it this far in the playoffs was in 2001! And at 33, I am pumped with where I am in my life right now. I get to do what I love every day. 

It is good practice to live a life based on appreciation, rather than expectation. So I am trying to do that this morning as one more birthday passes.

Recently, a good friend of mine (Chris) explained to me two theories for why life seems to speed up as you get older.

The first is that as you get older your life becomes less punctuated with significant milestones. When you’re younger, you have: going to high school, driving for the first time, voting for the first time, going to University, as well as a series of other life events that help create temporal awareness. But as you get older, many of us fall into more consistent routines – which isn’t all bad. Consistency can be boring, but you have to put in the time.

The second theory is that as you get older each year represents an increasingly smaller portion of your overall life. For instance, when you’re 5 years old, 1 year is 1/5th of your life. But when you’re 50, 1 year is only 1/50th of your life. So with each passing year, a year feels increasingly shorter.

Whatever the case may be, time seems to be speeding up and birthdays certainly feel a little less significant. But they’re still a great excuse to spend more time with family and friends. And that’s exactly what I did this past weekend.

Based on the above, birthdays are also a great reminder to try and punctuate one’s life with as many significant milestones as possible and to be grateful for them when they happen. I’ve been told that I tend to live in the future, as opposed to appreciating the now. (Probably has something to do with what I do for a living.) Perhaps I’ll get better at that with age.

Yesterday I promised that today’s post would be less sad. I am sticking to that promise, but I am also sticking with a somewhat similar theme: getting older.

Fast Company recently published an interview with New York-based architect Matthias Hollwich. The topic is aging and the kinds of spaces that we have created for people as they age: retirement communities, nursing homes, and so on.

The reason this is getting airtime right now is because Matthias has just published a book on the topic called, New Aging: Live smarter now to live better forever. 

But this isn’t a new focus. Matthias actually taught at the University of Pennsylvania while I was there and I remember his design studio being focused on this topic. (I wasn’t in his studio, unfortunately.)

The sound bite that I really like from the interview is this one:

“I think the biggest flaw is that it’s age segregation. You take all of the people who are above 75, 85, or 95, depending on what type of environment it is, and put them into one place. And then you’re just surrounded by old people, people who have social and physical challenges, and you’re not around the vibrancy of a multi-age environment, which is something that we experience all life long. I think that is something that society really has to rethink.”

Not only do I agree with him, but I think it exemplifies one of the things that I love about architecture. The idea that the way things are done today is usually not some sort of universal truth. Instead, everything can be questioned, rethought, and reinvented for the better. It’s a very entrepreneurial way of operating and I don’t think that parallel, between entrepreneurs and architects, is drawn or leveraged nearly enough.

I also don’t think we’ve given enough design consideration to this topic of aging. I mean, why can’t the spaces that people end their lives in be as (or more) sexy and enjoyable as (or than) the spaces they live the rest of their lives in? That’s what I want when I’m 95.

So kudos to Mattias and the rest of the team at Hollwich Kushner (his firm) for caring about and working on this. 

Book image from Matthias Hollwich’s Facebook.

Today is my 33rd birthday. 

It’s currently raining here in Toronto, but the sun is supposed to come out this afternoon. The Raptors won game 7 of the first round of the playoffs last night and now go on to face the Miami Heat in the conference semi-finals. The last time they made it this far in the playoffs was in 2001! And at 33, I am pumped with where I am in my life right now. I get to do what I love every day. 

It is good practice to live a life based on appreciation, rather than expectation. So I am trying to do that this morning as one more birthday passes.

Recently, a good friend of mine (Chris) explained to me two theories for why life seems to speed up as you get older.

The first is that as you get older your life becomes less punctuated with significant milestones. When you’re younger, you have: going to high school, driving for the first time, voting for the first time, going to University, as well as a series of other life events that help create temporal awareness. But as you get older, many of us fall into more consistent routines – which isn’t all bad. Consistency can be boring, but you have to put in the time.

The second theory is that as you get older each year represents an increasingly smaller portion of your overall life. For instance, when you’re 5 years old, 1 year is 1/5th of your life. But when you’re 50, 1 year is only 1/50th of your life. So with each passing year, a year feels increasingly shorter.

Whatever the case may be, time seems to be speeding up and birthdays certainly feel a little less significant. But they’re still a great excuse to spend more time with family and friends. And that’s exactly what I did this past weekend.

Based on the above, birthdays are also a great reminder to try and punctuate one’s life with as many significant milestones as possible and to be grateful for them when they happen. I’ve been told that I tend to live in the future, as opposed to appreciating the now. (Probably has something to do with what I do for a living.) Perhaps I’ll get better at that with age.

Yesterday I promised that today’s post would be less sad. I am sticking to that promise, but I am also sticking with a somewhat similar theme: getting older.

Fast Company recently published an interview with New York-based architect Matthias Hollwich. The topic is aging and the kinds of spaces that we have created for people as they age: retirement communities, nursing homes, and so on.

The reason this is getting airtime right now is because Matthias has just published a book on the topic called, New Aging: Live smarter now to live better forever. 

But this isn’t a new focus. Matthias actually taught at the University of Pennsylvania while I was there and I remember his design studio being focused on this topic. (I wasn’t in his studio, unfortunately.)

The sound bite that I really like from the interview is this one:

“I think the biggest flaw is that it’s age segregation. You take all of the people who are above 75, 85, or 95, depending on what type of environment it is, and put them into one place. And then you’re just surrounded by old people, people who have social and physical challenges, and you’re not around the vibrancy of a multi-age environment, which is something that we experience all life long. I think that is something that society really has to rethink.”

Not only do I agree with him, but I think it exemplifies one of the things that I love about architecture. The idea that the way things are done today is usually not some sort of universal truth. Instead, everything can be questioned, rethought, and reinvented for the better. It’s a very entrepreneurial way of operating and I don’t think that parallel, between entrepreneurs and architects, is drawn or leveraged nearly enough.

I also don’t think we’ve given enough design consideration to this topic of aging. I mean, why can’t the spaces that people end their lives in be as (or more) sexy and enjoyable as (or than) the spaces they live the rest of their lives in? That’s what I want when I’m 95.

So kudos to Mattias and the rest of the team at Hollwich Kushner (his firm) for caring about and working on this. 

Book image from Matthias Hollwich’s Facebook.